


Paging Dr. Mears

by Smit435



Category: Contagion (2011)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29853078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smit435/pseuds/Smit435
Summary: Watching the movie I wish they gave more time to Dr. Mears's death, so I did.





	Paging Dr. Mears

**Author's Note:**

> This is set almost immediately after her phone call to Dave telling him she's sick.

After those two calls Erin had time to think. Well as much thinking that she could do lying in bed with a pounding headache. It was mostly bout of worrying, opening, and closing her notebook checking if the person remembered was written down to be contacted. Or thinking of how they would work without her. Who or what she might have got it from, who she gave it to. She had some thoughts of regret as she picked over the events of the last 24 hours, of where she went wrong.

Sleep must have come for her since she woke to people with hazmat suits on. No, not hazmats... something else.

They talked to her, but her ears were swimming. It didn’t help when they moved her none too gently on a stretcher. Or when they moved her again to a gurney. The drive would have been nicer if they were quieter, or not pinching her with needles though she knew they had to.

It was different seeing the gymnasium ceiling as they brought her in. Then there were the tent ceiling.

Positive. Funny how the context changes a word. Positive wasn’t positive at all.

The days were blurry at best, with the only three points of solid time. One was when the bed beside her was emptied. She thinks it was a man who replaced a woman. And sometime before that when Dave gave her food, she eventually choked down a dry throat.

Dave, she should have said sorry. Should have told him not to worry, to focus on ending this virus.

She listened quietly to the man next to her as he was placated by a nurse’s voice, “We’re hoping for a donation soon—”

“Can... turn the heat up...” In her fuzzy vision she saw the blur leave his side.

Her arms moved first. Dragging the coat off her. “Here,” she didn’t know if he could hear her. Her arm were leaden stones as she tried to give it to him. Hear his shivered breathes.

Her own were quiet compared to her fevered ears.

Silence was her answer.

* * *

“We got another one.” It was the 14th death that day, not counting those who died during the night and were shipped out that morning. It was a woman, young, late twenties, maybe thirty. Erin Mears. Pretty once too, with limp blonde hair and sallowed skin. Her hand clutched at a coat that had slipped off her.

As they removed her from the bed to make room tears pushed at their eyes. They wonder if she had a spouse. A kid. A pet, waiting for them. If they followed God. The possibility of everything she could have been, wiped away.

They didn’t have any more body bags, had to make do with cheap plastic and duct tape.

They couldn’t say the people loading the corpses on the trucks were careless. Knew they were human too, but they couldn’t watch them be loaded. Their hands seemed cold as they dragged them into position on the back of the truck. It didn’t help that they wore a glossy green hazmat suits, that crinkled and distorted their stoic faces in a watery haze.

That they could stay that long to watch them, to say one last goodbye to them, to wish them well. Maybe it was stupid to wish corpses well. Maybe they were nothing more now. Soulless husks in a godless world.


End file.
